Cost of production without parity vs. costs of production in a parity system
How these two terms differ is an example of why clarity on parity is so important.
Price support vs income support
Policy that says farmers should receive the cost of production, or a percentage thereof, or cost of production plus a “reasonable profit” is justified because farmers ought to receive “fair prices.” If this policy is implemented as a price support, where actual market prices are supported at this level (a price floor) and the purchasers must pay that price for the commodity, then the cost to the government treasury can be virtually zero. This is a big selling point for policy makers focusing only on “fair prices” for farmers.
Overhauling the world’s agricultural system through a radical, but just transition
With continued complacency and irresponsible political responses to the threat of global climate change, we can expect a lot more disasters for society, which brings more opportunities for disaster capitalism, an idea popularized by Canadian author Naomi Klein. Responsible policy should start with the foundation of any society, its agriculture, and the foundation of that policy should be a parity-supply management system. If ever there was a time to bring parity into mainstream discussion of addressing social and environmental problems and combating global climate change, this is it.
Five Steps That Won't Feed the World and the Solutions That Will
We are posting this essay by George written in May 2014 as it is just as relevant - perhaps even more so - today. World Food Day was recognized on October 16 with demonstrations and actions around the world while here in Iowa the World Food Prize with all its glorification of ‘feeding the world’ continued the corporate agribusiness narrative, explicitly and implicitly. Meanwhile, the number of food insecure people has risen to an estimated 821 million. Climate change, rural poverty, land grabbing, and peasants being pushed off the land are just some of the causes of this increase in hunger that are directly and indirectly related to the chemical and technology dependent agriculture system promoted by agribusiness.
The brief article, “A Five-Step Plan to Feed the World” offered by Professor Jonathan Foley in the May 2014 National Geographic magazine, clearly states the stark features of a global society on the brink of overshooting the capacity of the ecosphere. I highly commend Professor Foley and his colleagues for being honest about the depth of the crisis because in the general media, and especially the farm media, one wouldn’t know that anyone should be alarmed at all. Here in Iowa where the landscape is plastered with millions of acres of genetically modified corn and soybeans along with their poisonous herbicides, insecticides, fungicides and fertilizers polluting our lakes and rivers, our institutions deny that Silent Spring has arrived, let alone that anything needs to change.